A morning out

 

SPICY DORSET APPLE CAKE

4 oz/115 g butter or margarine

4 oz/115 g caster or brown sugar

8 oz/225 g flour, S-R or "adjusted" (whatever THAT is!)

1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice (or a mixture to your choice)

1 lb/ .5 Kg cooking apples (a good way of mopping up the fallers)

3 oz/85g dried fruit (currents, sultanas, cranberries etc)

2 eggs

Rub the margarine and the flour together.  Add the spices, sugar, and peeled/cored/chopped apples, and the beaten eggs.  Put the mixture in a large cake tin (10 inch/25 cm round or 8 inch/20 cm square) and bake at Gas Mark 6/200 deg. C/400 deg. F) for 35 -45 mins.  The large amount of apple makes the cake a little fragile, so leave in the tin for 5 minutes or more before removing.  If you do not have a large cake tin, use two smaller ones and reduce the cooking time a little.

Here's an extract from a lovely poem from William Barnes (the Dorset poet), dated 1835: "Father Come Home" where it mentions an earlier Dorset apple cake (which just had bits of apple stuck into it):

Your supper's nearly ready.  I've a-got

Some teaties here a-doen in the pot;

I wish wi' all my heart I had some meat.

I got a little ceake too, here, a-beaken o'n

Upon the vier.  'Tis done by this time though

He's nice an' moist; vor when I were-a meakin o'n

I stuck some bits ov apple in the dough.

I've put the recipe up before, but here it is for any newcomers.

Yesterday we had a drive down to Llandeilo to go to our friend Brita's Antiques Fair, and catch up with old friends.  It was lovely to have a natter and wander round looking for anything different.

Inside it was very busy, and this was the only photo I managed to get - with someone walking into shot just as I took it! Anyway, it was nice to have a break from our four walls, though just walking down from the car park had Keith tired out and we had to abandon a plan we had for a surprise visit on old friends near where we used to live.  Keith couldn't manage more than a dozen steps up towards the church on the way back as it was slightly uphill and the tiny bit of energy he'd had had gone.  Such things are so fleeting.  He has to wait a full three months before having a blood test to see how the thyroxine is working - a whole 7 weeks to go.

    Tam and her boyfriend came today to help move the furniture back into our bedroom, and put some of the books back into her bookshelf, plus sorting out cookery stuff to take back with them.  It was lovely to see them.

    However, when I sat down and watched an Escape to the Country, it was from Devon, and it made me feel very low to realize house values there mean it is forever beyond our budget, especially post-Covid.  It's something like £482K for a fairly ordinary detached house now.  Of course, this is our final home, but I still held on to a little bit of hope that we could somehow get magicked down there in time for the Last Orders!  Isn't it silly?  But I am quite choked now.

Llanlleonfel Church, Garth

 This post is now is a separate BLOG - see side-bar link Silent in the Shroud.  I couldn't figure out the technicalities yesterday, after another bad night's sleep!  This was meant to be a blog-post mainly for me, to remember and add to research done on churches visited, this is a bit long and technical. Apologies.  Hope you enjoy it anyway. (Update: Oh no it isn't!  Click on the side-bar link and then click again on the side-bar link should get you there.  Back to Blogger school now .. .)

  

Llanlleonfel Church overlooks quite a bleak area, and Theophilus Jones in a "History of Brecknock" suggests that the name of the church was originally 'Llan Lleon Voel' which translates as 'Church upon the bare moor'.  That makes absolute sense to me.

This is another church 'within a landscape', where the sum of the parts is much greater than the building alone.  The nearby  Roman fort at Caerau would have been approached by a a branch of the Roman road between Neath and Chester ran nearby, and this road would have been utilised for centuries after the Romans left.  

The church stands within a curvilinear churchyard, and it is possible that the earliest site here began because of the Holy Well nearby (although this was not mentioned in Francis Jones' book on the topic.)  It is a Sulphur spring, and even has a name, being called the Billy Wern spring. The link will show you a photo.

The East end of the church. 

In the wider landscape beyond the church a series of earthworks have been recorded.  There are linear banks, possible platforms and are suggestive of a long-deserted Medieval settlement.  There is an area of ridge and furrow, also suggestive of a former Medieval settlement.  To the S-E of the church is a sunken trackway, which show that there was further settlement in the area.  To the western end of the churchyard "is a univallate rectangular enclosure, 30m x 55m", which could possibly be "a later prehistoric defended enclosure or part of an early medieval graveyard." (Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust).  

Probably the most important event at this church was the marriage of Sally Gwynne to the well known Methodist hymn write, Charles Wesley, which took place in 1749.  John Wesley, Charles' father, often preached in the area and I have written previously of him leaping onto a fallen gravestone at Maesmynis Church to preach to the people.  Wesleyan marriages were not  renowned for being happy affairs, and indeed this one was a very sombre affair, accompanied by much praying and hymn-singing".  One can only imagine the earnest endeavours in the marriage bed!

I was delighted to find that my favourite diariest, Francis Kilvert, also knew Llanlleonfel:

Extract from the Diary of Rev. Francis Kilvert 1840 - 1876:

Wednesday 6th August 1873

This afternoon Mr & Mrs Venables and Mary Bevan and I went by train from Builth Road to Garth to attend the Garth Flower Show, Bazaar and Athletic Sports, all in one.  Mrs Welby was holding the bazaar in one of the tents for the benefit of poor old Llanlleonfel Church now in ruins, but which they hope to get restored.

    While the athletic sports were going on I wandered away by myself into congenial solitude for a visit to the ruined Church of Llanlleonfel. Passing by the quaint old house of Garth, Formerly one of the numberless possessions of the great Gwynne family, I descended by a cart road into the meadows.

    The ruined Church totted lone upon a hill in desolate silence.  The old tombstones stood knee deep in the long course grass and white and purple flowers nodded over the graves.  The door stood open and I went in.  The window frames and seats were gone.  Nothing was left but the high painted deal pulpit bearing the sacred monogram in yellow letters.  Some old memorial tablets bearing Latin inscriptions in remembrance of Marmaduke Gwynne and his family were affixed to the East wall.  The place was utterly deserted, there was not a sound.  But through the ruined windows I could see the white tents of the flower show in the valley beneath.  I ascended the tall rickety pulpit and several white owls disturbed from their day sleep floated silently under the Rood Loft on their broad downy wings and sauntered sailing without sound through the frameless east and west windows to take refuge with a graceful sweep of their broad white pinions in the ancient yew that kept watch over the Church.  It was a place for owls to dwell in and for satyrs to dance in.

    It is long since the Church has been used, though weddings were celebrated in it after it was disused for other services.  Thee is a curious story of a gentleman who was married here.  Some years after his marriage his wife died, and it happened that he bought his second bride to the same Church.  Upon the alter rails she found hanging the lace handkerchief which her predecessor had dropped at the former wedding.  The Church had never been used nor the handkerchief disturbed in the several years between the two weddings.

    We had tea as guests of Mrs Maitland in the old Garth House which with its partly castellated out-walls reminded me of an ancient German Schloes.

The Gwynn memorials, all in Latin to show their status.  Here is Marmaduke, who presented the bell.  Marmaduke seems to be a popular name with the gentry at this time, as the Lloyds also used it.

Looking towards the altar and 3 pretty little stained glass windows (below, closer up).

The font - somehow I missed getting a photo of the bell which had been donated by Marmaduke Gwynn in 1716.

NOW for the early Christian monument which lured me to this particular Church.  This dates to the 6th century, and was not brought into the Church until 1938/9.  I couldn't make it out - just faint lines with MY feeble camera!  Translated, it says "Silent in the shroud, Ioruert and Ruallaun in their graves await in peace the dreadful coming of judgement."

Below are better photographs from "A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones an Stone Sculptures in Wales", Vol. 1 by Mark Redknap and John M Lewis.  A treasured book of mine, along with Nancy Edward's Volume II on South and West Wales.  Volume III is £95 - if you can get it!!  Keith bought me the first two volumes, bless him.  They were worth every penny (as they were NOT cheap, even in 2007, being £70 each!) I have referred to them a lot.

Also unnoticed by me, the incised "cross potent" markings on the side.

This shows the actual Latin inscription and includes the letters which have been obscured. I have spared you the detailed etimology which follows. Now you know where the title of this new blog came from!

I was very drawn to the mound in the centre of the graveyard, where lie, one assumes,  Ioruert and Ruallaun, who were, incidentally, a Brecknockshire king and his son, supposedly killed in battle and buried here.  A yew tree was planted on top, though cut down at one stage has put out regrowth as they are wont to do.  In 1699 Eduard Lluyd records two stones standing some 8 feet apart, one of which we may assume was the dedication stone now inside the church.  Two large boulders are still in the churchyard, elsewhere (I missed them as I didn't know they were there until I read further) but their secondary deposition isn't helpful as they were doubtless moved when the church was rebuilt in 1876.

Doing some research on the history of our new home

 

Anyone who knows me knows how important history and archaeology are to me.  I live in the past, and always have done.  Therefore I felt it was important to learn about the history of our area, and the people in it, and of course, about our new home.  Not that it is a new-build of course, and yesterday when I went down to the Local History Society in town and did some research, I got its full age.  The earliest I had traced the property back on this site was 1785 but it went back further, and there was a baptism in 1732 to a family who owned the estate including this particular spot.  There were wider family also in the vicinity.  

    There were various "hatches, matches and despatches" and one former occupant left:

Wearing apparel               £10. 10 shillings

Horses and saddles           £10

Household furniture          £10

7 cows and calves             £70

Barren cattle                     £50

2 Draught horses               £16. 16 shillings

25 ewes and lambs            £15. 15 shillings

23 barren sheep                £11. 5 shillings

Pigs and poultry                 £10. 10 shillings

Horses' tack & implements

                    of husbandry  £15

Wheat and corn thrashed

               and in store         £25

Some of the estate owners were involved in the church as Reverends, and one daughter married a Surgeon in Builth.  One son was described as a "farmer" prior to his father's death, and then signed himself as "Gent" afterwards (e.g. a gentleman.)

    At its peak, the farm was 139 acres, but the actual old mansion house was in decline and by the 1870s was lived in by a farm labourer - the master of the house and his family having moved across the valley to another of the estate properties which had been left to him after his father's decease. (In separate earlier research I did I found out there was a huge falling out and a Court Case over who had what property and a desperate wriggling of the son NOT to inherit his father's debts by damaging the will.)

    Between the 1870s an 1880s it would appear that the estate was sold on to an incoming family of property and their first daughter was born here.  They subsequently built a grand new house nearby to live in and the "old mansion house" was described as unoccupied in the next census.  It was dropped where it stood, and meanwhile a new grand stable block had been built to serve the New House.  The old stable block and carriage house had already been  amalgamated and a dwelling house made out of the two end portions, although for a good while afterwards our current living room (the coach house) housed the family's chauffer-driven car. 

    Other extensions to the back of this house which show on the 1888 map, were subsequently knocked down and the ground level at the back of our house is up to the level of the kitchen windows.  The same applies to the side gardens, although those have a pathway between the house and the higher land.  As you can imagine, all that building rubble is not conducive to easy gardening!

    So, I had a lovely morning and now have a better understanding of the development of this site and our home.

Witches Butter fungus on a fallen branch.

One thing I didn't mention was that the field opposite used to be an orchard, at the time of the 1840 Tithe Map.  I will assume it was probably cider apples.  Anyway, I have been planting my own mixed orchard here on the little triangular paddock above the house.  Heritage apples have gone in so far, plus some small trees I grew from Heritage apple pips and which came with me from our old home, so it will be interesting to see which parent they take after.  Pears, plums to go in next.  The giant cooking apple Howgate Wonder was planted this morning (bought from Aldi no less), and four Crab Apples (twigs really!) bought from The Woodland Trust.

The church of St Gwendoline at Llyswen

 

As you can see, sunlight was conspicuous by its absence by the time we reached Llyswen.  If you would like more information/a better photo of the entire church, please go HERE to the CPAT site.  (Clwyd-Powys Archeological Trust).  You could do worse than go to Billy Blue-Eyes' site HERE  as he truly has it covered from all angles!

As per usual, another church virtually rebuilt in Victorian times- I think it says an awful lot about the state of most rural churches that they were all in a dire state of repair. 1863 was when the rebuilding was carried out, and the original was seen as a "small and narrow structure".  Nothing remains of from the Medieval period.

The three villages served - Boughrood is pronounced "Bochrood". The dedication is to Gwendoline (who is also dedicated to the church at Talgarth, some 3 miles away).  She was one of the many children of Brychan, who all reached sainthood.  However, the festival day of this church is 13th November - as is that of St Meilig at Llowes - it is possible that the church may have been dedicated to him initially.

My excellent book The Celtic Christian Sites of the central and southern Marches (Sarah and John Zalukyj) states that the shape of the church suggests an early Christian site, being virtually circular and raised.  A tumulous in a nearby garden was written of in 1840, "opposite to the remarkable bend in the Wye river" but is no longer visible, although there is a small hillfort west of the church.  Perhaps this was a very early site of worship, replacing an even earlier pagan site.

I'm hoping you can enlarge this - if not, I will type it up tomorrow, should anyone 

require.

The Norman font still survives. Somewhat plain.

In the churchyard were a plethora of interesting tombs and burial stones.  This poor little baby, Mary Jane Griffiths, daughter  of the village draper and his wife Mary lasted for just 5 weeks and 3 days . . .

Here the three Reverends were buried - the Reverend William Williams and his two sons.

This beautiful chest tomb has lost a support and is quite cock-eyed.  It is dedicated to the Rev. John Morris, A.B. of Jesus College, Oxford, aged just 34 years.  He was remembered for his unvarying kindness to the poor.

I couldn't read the dedication on this gravestone, for it was covered in ivy, but I loved the decoration at the bottom.

A very narrow coffin-shaped memorial rendered completely anonymous by the lichen growing upon it.

A rather smart combination headstone and small chest tomb in memory of Mary Radcliffe, who died in 1886.

Tomorrow I will share some of the history of our new home with you.  I knew much of what I read (and copied at great haste) today, but confirmed dates and earliest occupants, which was satisfying.  I had a lovely morning researching and I've not scribbled that fast since Uni lectures!

I can't wait for tomorrow. . . .

 . . . .because I get some study time down at our Local History Centre, researching the history of our house, and the surrounding area.  I can't wait.  I have already done a fair bit using the Census records, Tithe Maps, later maps, BMD records for the parish, local newspapers, antiquarian books etc.  Now the LHC has a copy a new book about the houses in the parish which has come out and I can't wait to see what it says about our property.

Yesterday we had to go to the Tip and as we wanted to offload the old carpet from our bedroom (helpfully cut into strips) a.s.a.p. we decided we would go to Brecon, and also do the Grocery shopping there this week.  So Aldi and Morrisons got our trade.  I was very good and despite a quick look in the plant corner - where there were some very sorry looking plants that nobody had bothered to water - I came out plantless!  

    On the way back we went in search of St Matthew's Church, Llandefalle, which was a mile or so from the main road.  Well, we could see it, on the hillside above a beautiful manor house - the two are of course often in proximity to one another.  After driving up and down a bit - to get to higher ground to see if there was an obvious route it, we thought you must have to go up the Manor driveway and around the back.  I wasn't feeling in a mood to be dauntless though, so we came home and I checked it out online and saw a different approach, so we may try again in a few days.  BILLY BLUE EYES - is it one you've been to?  The views, above and below, were taken from a junction where we turned around.  A house was on the corner and what lovely views they enjoyed of the Brecon Beacons, even though Pen-y-Fan was wrapped in cloud yesterday.

The new bedroom carpet was fitted on Monday.  Originally we had been promised a two man team who would help carry furniture.  It was just as well that Tam and J carried the furniture OUT at the weekend, as only one lad turned up on Monday. Very helpful, and explained that the other chap was working for himself now.  We thought we had ordered a lighter more silvery grey carpet - and it had a felt backing.  This one didn't and came with underlay.  I will assume that the shop couldn't get the carpet ordered (we were told this sometimes happened).  Anyway, it is a GREAT improvement on the threadbare carpet that was there . . . but we shan't be using that carpet shop again. We tried to "keep it local" and it had been recommended.

Furniture, drawers too heavy to lift etc waiting to go back in.  Keith just about managed to take one end of the smaller drawer for his chest of drawers this morning, once I'd dragged it along the hall to our bedroom doorway.  The rest will have to wait until Tam is back at the weekend.

For my next post, another church visited (St Gwendoline at Llyswen).  It is certainly time to send up a few prayers for the people of Ukraine and the Russian soldiers unwilling to take part in a war they don't believe in - or support a megalomaniac psychopath.  He has committed war crimes - dropping cluster bombs and ghastly thermobaric bombs - and on the civilian population, targeting homes, hospitals and even schools.  That is  war by any standards.    

Busy gardening - and Nasturtium fabric listed

 

I've just listed this on Ebay.  Starting price £30, as it is beautiful fabric (linen) and you'd be hard pressed to find any more I think.  If it doesn't sell, it will go to an Antiques Fair with me. Sorry RP - tried the address you gave me and my email was returned.

    I was planning a post about the church we went to yesterday, just off the Rhayader road, but am just TOO tired tonight - have spent 3 hours gardening today, taking advantage of the weather.  It really did feel like the first day of spring and the sun was beautifully warm.  I got some weeding done in several areas, removing stones and digging through, and got thoroughly tired pulling up lengths of ancient weed supressing membrane with its inches deep covering of soil, grass roots, grass, and weeds.

    I struggled to get all the bits of Beech twig from the plastic pond cover mesh we used last winter.  Won't bother again as I nearly fell in trying to drag it out of the water with its burden of twigs and saturated leaves.  Anyway, I managed and it is now ready to go to the tip, wrapped in a bin bag to stop any birds getting caught up in it.

    I couldn't face digging a hole for planting another fruit tree today - will do that tomorrow. Tam has been packing up the stuff she needs for the week as she is moving out today. She'll be back next weekend to collect more. I am looking forward to having some food cupboard space again and a lot fewer herbs and spices!

    She and J moved our big chests of drawers for us as we are having a new bedroom carpet fitted tomorrow and the lino (finally) laid in the two bathrooms.  They also drilled the wall and hung another of my bedroom pictures - another print by Gillian McDonald.  It will look lovely in there tomorrow.

    Off to collapse in a heap now.

A horsey walk start to the day

 

I noticed my friend P taking her horse B for a walk, so I decided to go and join her.  It  is such a lovely morning here - too good to waste.  I plan to be out in the garden later. Another 4 trees to plant.

B was pleased to have a bite of sweet grass from the vergeside, whilst P and I chatted.  

The view, as ever, was stunning.  We walked about a mile and then B powered up the hill, and I dragged myself up in his wake!

I discovered this book this week, and bought myself the cheapest copy I could find.  It was in tidy condition but then the dust jacket got ripped in the post when something heavy must have been put on top of this parcel and twisted.  It's still perfectly readable and I shall settle down with it later.  Just dipped in so far.

FINALLY, my expensive wallpaper arrived.  It took 6 weeks!  It is just as beautiful as shown.  I haven't decided which of the spare bedrooms to put it in yet.  Will ponder and get back to you.

Right, onwards and upwards.  I have filled several bags with Tam's kitchen stuff (sauces, packets, tins, spices etc) and there is still more in the fridge to go.